Humankind stands at a crossroads: will artificial intelligence make us superhumanly productive, liberating us from life’s most mundane tasks? Or have we opened Pandora’s box, unleashing sentient technology that will eventually destroy us?
In a colossal contest of persuasion and wit, two teams of our best and brightest debate whether artificial intelligence is better than the real thing.
Decide once and for all with team captains Annabel Crabb and David Marr, as they duke it out alongside teammates Matilda Boseley, Rhys Nicholson, Tracey Spicer and Toby Walsh. Adjudicated by Yumi Stynes.
Matilda Boseley is an award-winning social media reporter and presenter for Guardian Australia. Through the publication's popular TikTok channel, she writes and hosts their short-form news explainers. This work won a Quill Award for Innovation in Journalism and was nominated for a Walkley Award for the same category. She was named Walkley Awards' 2019 Student Journalist of the Year. Her first book, The Year I Met My Brain, documents her experiences after being diagnosed with ADHD at 23 and investigates the hidden costs of ADHD among adults.
Annabel Crabb is a writer and presenter for the ABC. She's also a keen amateur podcaster and co-hosts the inexplicably popular Chat 10, Looks 3 podcast with her colleague Leigh Sales, who lends credibility to the exercise. Annabel has worked extensively in newspapers, radio and TV as a political journalist and won a Walkley Award for Stop At Nothing: The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull. She published a bestselling book about gender and work, The Wife Drought in 2014, and has published two cookbooks with childhood friend Wendy Sharpe, the latest of which is Special Guest. Her most recent Quarterly Essay is Men at Work.
David Marr is a journalist and broadcaster who writes for The Guardian. He’s published a couple of biographies and a number of books about politics, censorship and immigration. Over the last 10 years he has written a number of Quarterly Essays. His latest is The White Queen: One Nation and the Politics of Race. He previously presented Media Watch and appears regularly on Insiders and The Drum. His most recent book is Killing for Country: A Family Story.
Rhys Nicholson is a multi-award-winning Australian comedian, writer, actor and presenter. Alongside a booming live and televised stand-up career – with performances in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and North America and on Netflix – they are a favourite across our small screens too, from panel shows to documentary, acting roles (in the sci-fi comedy The Imperfects) and as a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under. With an enormous passion for live performing, their work continues to receive awards and accolades around the world. Dish is their debut book.
Tracey Spicer AM is a multiple Walkley Award–winning author, journalist and broadcaster who has anchored national programs for ABC TV and radio, Network Ten and Sky News. In 2019, she was named the NSW Premier’s Woman of the Year, accepted the Sydney Peace Prize alongside Tarana Burke for the Me Too movement and won the national award for Excellence in Women’s Leadership through Women & Leadership Australia. In 2018, Tracey was chosen as one of the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence, winning the Social Enterprise and Not-For-Profit category. For her 30 years of media and charity work, Tracey has been awarded the Order of Australia. Her first book, The Good Girl Stripped Bare, became a bestseller within weeks of publication, while her TEDx Talk, The Lady Stripped Bare, has attracted almost seven million views worldwide. Tracey’s essays have appeared in dozens of books including Women of Letters, She’s Having a Laugh, Father Figures, Unbreakable and Bewitched & Bedevilled: Women Write the Gillard Years. Her new book, Man-Made: How the bias of the past is being built into the future, was published by Simon & Schuster in May 2023. It has since been longlisted for a Walkley Award and won the Social Responsibility category in the Australian Business Book Awards.
Toby Walsh is Chief Scientist of UNSW.AI, University of NSW's new AI Institute. He is a strong advocate for limits to ensure AI is used to improve our lives, having spoken at the UN and to heads of state, parliamentary bodies, company boards and many others on this topic. This advocacy has led to him being "banned indefinitely" from Russia. He is a Fellow of the Australia Academy of Science and was named on the international "Who's Who in AI" list of influencers. He has written four books on AI for a general audience, the most recent is Faking It! Artificial Intelligence in A Human World.
Yumi Stynes hosts a national radio show on the KiiS network, The 3pm Pickup, and has written a series of guidebooks, including Welcome to Consent, which was recently named one of the New York Public Library's top 50 books of 2021. In spite of her history of TV presenting, Yumi is now best known for Ladies, We Need to Talk, which has been a cult podcast since it first dropped in 2017, spawning its own book and numerous ‘book’ clubs where women get together and unpack what they've heard after each new episode. If she dies tomorrow, she'll be glad that she got to co-write the definitive guidebook on what to do when you get your period.
